8.09.2008

Kiln avoidance.

Normally, I am excited to open a kiln and pull things out of it. But not today. I fired a bisque kiln yesterday, with 2 custom cake stands (I must be a glutton for punishment) and a set of custom bowls. About 4 hours into it, I hear a load "pop." This sort of tragedy is rare at our studio. Very rare. So I didn't even recognize what it was. Until about 20 minutes later. So I got freaked and peaked in the kiln. It was a cake stand. I could see that it was totally busted. Hopefully there aren't too many other casualties. But I'd much rather wait until tomorrow to find out. No reason to rush the pain.

4 comments:

Patricia Griffin Ceramics said...

Sorry for the popping pots... Seems like I've read reports of exploding kiln loads on the clay blogs a couple of times in the last few days... Must be the universe sending me caution signs. I have a bunch of pieces awaiting bisque firing but haven't wanted to load it up because of my achy back. Maybe that's saved me from a similar experience!

Good luck with the kiln opening... Hope it's not as bad as you might be imaging!

Cheryl Alena Kinzel said...

The worst noises are the pops and sliding sounds. I lost an entire shelf to wobbly kiln posts last week. I hope yours isn't too bad.

Vegan_Noodle said...

Bummer!! This reminds me that I need to get in touch with you about a cake stand....

jeanette said...

Thanks for the well-wishes.

Patricia- hope your back feels better soon. The incident was totally my fault. I accidentally programmed the kiln for a glaze fire and not a bisque fire...so it just ramped up way too fast for the large and not-quite-dry-enough cake stand.

Cheryl- I've never lost an entire shelf like that...ugh.

vegan_noodle- haha...very funny Amanda...